Monday, June 30, 2008

Pleas revert to me ASAP, Tks&B. Rgds.

Are you a little confused what that sentence means? It is a good example of what I have seen in e-mails from people who don’t speak English as their first language (this example for the record did not come from a Chinese person) Many of the e-mails that we get have very bad grammar and you have to just guess what the meaning is. I am very poor at spelling so I can relate to the difficulties people have. Most of the time you can understand what they are trying to say, but they just used an incorrect word. Many people also use abbreviations in their letters (our business writing professors would have something to say about this!). Like Pls for “please” or tks for “thanks.”

I have sent e-mails to contacts in Africa, South America, Asia, and Europe. I even got to call someone on the phone in Belgium. International communication isn’t as difficult as I thought; you just have to keep your English simple.

You also have to be aware of the time difference when sending e-mails and calling people. The workers always make sure to answer every e-mail each day because if they don’t it may be 2 days before someone hears from them. I have also heard of some workers waking up early to send a few e-mails in hopes of catching people in western continents before they leave work.

Working in a country that has a different government, and therefore different allies than us is quite interesting. H&T is the agent and good partner with IRISL- which is an Iranian shipping company. I find it quite interesting that if I was in America I would never have shipments coming from Iran to a port near me! I think it would be interesting if I were at H&T if things got worse with America and Iran. How would you like it if one of your partners was suddenly not able to get shipments to you because their country was in a war?